AI Search Audit Retail Banking
barclays.co.uk

Barclays owns Bing.
Trustpilot owns the brand-reputation surface everywhere else.

Mid-band Cited (6/18). The brand surface bifurcates: Bing routes "Barclays UK reviews" entirely to Barclays-owned URLs (10 of 10), while Google and Brave route the same query to Trustpilot, Reviews.io, and PissedConsumer in top 5. For UK banking, public review-host ratings directly affect customer-acquisition cost. The lift is a brand-owned /reviews aggregation, not more category content. Fix 2 audit-time note: barclays.co.uk returned HTTP 403 to direct fetches (CDN-level bot management); robots.txt rules require out-of-band verification.

66
Composite Score
Developing
72Search
65Design
70Brand
62Compete
60Growth
AI Visibility Maturity Curve · F&T /18 methodology
Cited
AI Share of Voice · Google 2/6 · Bing 2/6 · Brave 2/6 · Composite 6/18 (bottom edge of the Cited band)
Under F&T's /18 methodology (6 queries × 3 engines, β-strict math, Fix 2 degraded-mode), Barclays lands at the bottom edge of Cited. Bing surfaces 8 of 10 Barclays-owned URLs for branded queries (the strongest own-brand dominance in the cohort to date). Google and Brave route brand-reputation queries (Q2) to Trustpilot, Reviews.io, and PissedConsumer; Bing's Q2 surface is anomalous, returning 10 of 10 Barclays-owned URLs. The lift from here is a brand-owned /reviews aggregation that shifts the reputation-query citation surface from third-party to brand-owned.
Blocked
Invisible
Emerging
Cited
Audit-time note · Fix 2 degraded mode
Direct fetch of barclays.co.uk returned HTTP 403 across multiple paths (CDN-level bot management). Robots.txt rules could not be verified server-side. The 18-cell SoV grid was measured via Google + Bing + Brave search-engine indexes; 5-factor scoring inferred from search-result snippets for factors 1 to 4 (factor 5 scored normally). Out-of-band browser-based robots.txt verification is the first recommended follow-up.
Full audit available
The 18-cell grid (snippet-inferred under Fix 2), the brand-reputation finding on Q2, the Citation Host Map for banking, the Vendor Bake-Off readiness verdict (Unverifiable under 403), and the named Top Action live in the full report.
Read the full AI Search Report →
Cohort callout · May 2026

Of 5 globally-famous brands tested under F&T's AI Search methodology in May 2026, 0 reached Recommended · 4 Cited · 0 Emerging · 0 Invisible · 1 Blocked.

The pattern across the Cited cohort: AI knows these brands by name, not by category. Branded queries surface the brand's own URLs; category queries route to editorial reviewers, comparison sites, or Reddit. The 1 Blocked brand is structurally different: robots.txt closure, not content gap.